Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  Z 2921

  1. Not actually by Anacreon, but a late poem in his style: Carmina Anacreontea 30, 1 West. It is ode 44 in De Rogati’s edition, from which this line was probably transcribed (tome 2, p. 20). In Nathan Haskell Dole’s translation (1903): “I dreamt that I was running … / Say, what might this dream betoken?” The Italian translation is by Leopardi.

  Z 2923

  1. This is the gist of the “Discorso … sui costumi,” probably written by Leopardi in 1824 and never published in his lifetime (it is mentioned on Z 4491). Cf. his letter to his brother Carlo of 18 January 1823 (Epistolario, p. 630), about Rome as “a dung heap of literature, of opinions, and of customs (or rather of usages, since the Romans, and perhaps also the Italians, don’t have customs).”

  2. A thought reworked in Z 4283, and again in Pensieri 62.

  Z 2927

  1. Note that “almost glad” is an interlinear addition from 1827.

  Z 2928

  1. Cf. Z 75 and note.

  Z 2930

  1. Festus, De verborum significatione, p. CCLXXIV.

  Z 2937

  1. Leopardi will come back to this problem from a different perspective on Z 4127–32, 4169. See also Z 4174 and note 2.

  Z 2941

  1. Leopardi may have in mind chaps. 7–9 of bk. 1 of Gravina’s Della ragione poetica (pp. 12–17), a crucial text of Vichian flavor read in 1818 (cf. Z 16). Cf. also Z 3386.

  Z 2942

  1. Cf. the image of the scale on Z 2899–900.

  Z 2944

  1. The Romantics (and, more specifically, Ludovico di Breme) are the implied subject of the preceding sentences. Cf. Z 15ff. For the contention that “poetry is scarcely proper to our times” (Z 734), see Z 4479 and 4497. The reader can usefully compare this thought with Karl Marx’s famous question: “Is the view of nature and of social relations which shaped Greek imagination and Greek art possible in the age of automatic machinery, and railways, and locomotives, and electric telegraphs?… All mythology masters and shapes and dominates the forces of nature in and through the imagination; hence it disappears as soon as man gains mastery over the forces of nature. What becomes of the Goddess Fame side by side with Printing House Square? Greek art presupposes the existence of Greek mythology, i.e., that nature and even that form of society are wrought up in a popular fancy in an unconsciously artistic fashion” (A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, trans. N. I. Stone, New York: International Library Publishing Co., 1904, pp. 310–11).

  Z 2949

  1. In the introduction to the Essai sur l’origine des connaissances humaines (in Oeuvres, tome 1, p. 9), Condillac had written that “ideas are connected with signs, and it is only by this means … that they are connected to each other” (Damiani). See also Z 2584 and note.

  Z 2950

  1. Leopardi’s account of the composition and decomposition of ideas, i.e., the process of “analysis” (Z 2960) betrays the Lockean and Condillacian matrix of his thought (cf. Z 1184, note). He had read in the Venetian edition of Locke’s Essay Francesco Soave’s pages on the “analysis of human understanding,” preceding book 2. See, however, Leopardi’s criticism of “analysis” on Z 1852 and note 2.

  Z 2958

  1. See Rousseau, Discours sur l’origine de l’inégalité (in Oeuvres, vol. 3, p. 151). Pacella rightly observes that Leopardi may have had this quote indirectly from Dutens, tome 3, p. 144.

  Z 2960

  1. See Z 2950 and note.

  Z 2961

  1. See Z 1569 and note.

  Z 2963

  1. Leopardi here repeats a concept that had been important to him since Z 8–9.

  Z 2966

  1. Alfieri recalls how he did not usually set eyes on any other female faces but that of his nine-year-old sister, and how he therefore felt an “innocent love” for the faces of some novices observed in the church adjoining his own house (Vita, part 1, Epoch 1, ch. 3). On the strength of first impressions in children see Z 481–84; on habituation in children with reference to beauty see Z 1183ff.

  Z 2967

  1. “[F]or just as we recognize beauty in a boy, so we do in a youth, a full-grown man, or an old man.”

  Z 2972

  1. Priscian, Partitiones duodecim versuum Aeneidos principalium, in Grammatici latini, vol. 3, p. 466.

  Z 2974

  1. Plautus, Mostellaria 609 (a).

  2. Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae 11, 7, 3.

  Z 2978

  1. The following sentence, with the reference to Algarotti, is an unattached marginal addition.

  2. It is worth noting how Leopardi’s judgment differs here and on Z 2980 from that of Chateaubriand. In the passage cited in Leopardi’s note (an unattached addition), Chateaubriand advances a comparison between Virgil and Racine, stating that the latter is perhaps superior to the former, but the author of the Aeneid “has something which moves the heart more sweetly,” especially in the second half of the poem. Hence a passage struck out by Leopardi in the ms.: “Where Chateaubriand (Genius, etc.) denies that he shows any sign of tiredness” and the addition on Z 2980.

  Z 2980

  1. This sentence is added to the margin; cf. the previous note.

  Z 2982

  1. The two religious epics by Milton and Klopstock, published in 1667 and in 1773. Chateaubriand had been much preoccupied by the difference between a pagan and a Christian epic poem.

  Z 2987

  1. The author of this work was José Francisco de Isla, better known under his pseudonym of Lobón de Salazar. Leopardi owned an edition of 1770; see bk. 3, ch. 1, § 13, vol. 1, p. 280.

  Z 2988

  1. A particularly intricate sentence in the original, preluding the idea that young people of the present are generally more unhappy than the old, for which see Z 3922.

  2. The suicide of Pomponius Atticus, a rich and cultured Roman knight and a friend of Cicero, is recounted by Cornelius Nepos in the Excellentium Imperatorum vitae [Lives of eminent commanders] 25, 21–22.

  Z 2990

  1. The eighteenth-century concept of linguistic “character” or “genius” (as in Condillac, for example, or before in Herder) allows Leopardi to avoid the contradiction (see Z 3559–60) of positioning French halfway between the Romance and the northern languages.

  Z 2992

  1. Diomedes, Ars grammatica, bk. 1, in Grammatici latini, vol. 1, p. 367.

  Z 2993

  1. Virgil, Aeneid 4, 383.

  Z 2995

  1. The acute accents are in the ms. even though in each case, as Leopardi alerts us, we are dealing with an open e.

  2. Weller, Grammatica graeca nova, preface, p. VIII, citing Johann F. Fischer.

  3. In the ms. the Greek phrase is wholly unaccented.

  Z 3001

  1. Plato, Sophist 230a.

  Z 3002

  1. See Z 3711–12.

  2. Livy, 6, 41, 8.

  Z 3003

  1. In this marginal addition Leopardi is almost certainly recalling his own visit to the Pio-Clementino Museum during his stay in Rome.

  Z 3004

  1. Claudian, De consulatu Honorii Augusti 8, 114. The two following sentences are a marginal unattached addition.

  Z 3010

  1. Perticari observes that certain idioms used by prose writers and the liberties taken by poets are based upon and justified by the “rustic Roman which for six centuries lived and flourished throughout Italy.”

  Z 3012

  1. See also Z 1022, where Leopardi discusses Goldoni and Meli. Important dialect poets in Leopardi’s time were the Milanese Carlo Porta (1775–1821) and the Roman Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli (1791–1863).

  Z 3013

  1. Contrast this view (confirmed on Z 3046) with Z 3964, where Leopardi maintains that “the fact that Homer wrote in a dialect rather than in the common language only goes to show that in his time there was no common language.”

  2. Sappho wrote in Aeolian dialect, Theocritus in Doric.

  Z 3014

 
; 1. Alfonso Varano da Camerino, author of the Visioni sacre e morali, exerted a strong influence on Leopardi’s first literary endeavors.

  Z 3018

  1. Encyclopédie méthodique, loc. cit., tome 3, part 1, p. 349. The article “Samskret” is by Nicolas Beauzée, who cites Alexandre Dow’s Dissertation sur la religion des brahmines. Cf. Z 955–56 and 984.

  2. That is, the homonymous author of Girone and of the Coltivazione.

  3. The pages cited from Prose fiorentine, tome 2, loc. cit., discuss the peoples living between the Indus and Ganges deltas, and their sophisticated scientific knowledge, of which they were very proud, and which was recorded “in verses of very ancient writers, and in a language, which they call Sanskrit, that is, well structured, which is written with fifty three characters.”

  4. G. Tiraboschi, Storia della letteratura italiana, loc. cit., refers to the many letters (included in the Prose fiorentine) written in 1583, 1585, and 1586 by Sassetti from India.

  5. Father Paolinus (the Austrian Carmelite Johann Philip Wesdin) was the author of a number of important works on India, including the first printed Sanskrit grammar, Sidharubam seu Grammatica Samscrdamica, published in Rome in 1790. The article cited from the Biblioteca Italiana is also mentioned on Z 983.

  Z 3020

  1. Cantus firmus, that is, generally speaking, Gregorian (or plain) chant, is so called because of its solemn character, caused by the regular nature of its rhythm. Florid song (canto figurato) refers to a more ornamented style, originally, in the ecclesiastical context, one in which more than one note was sung to a syllable. See G. Martini, Storia della musica, vol. 1, respectively pp. 473 and 194–205 (= LL); Peter Lichtenthal, Dizionario e Bibliografia della musica, Milan 1826, vol. 2, pp. 132–33.

  Z 3021

  1. The passage cited is not in fact from Statius but from Silius Italicus, Punica 10, 623. Another instance of this same confusion is on Z 2821.

  2. Phaedrus 2, 5, 18 (ed. Burmann, p. 131); Cicero, Phaenomena Aratea 370.

  Z 3028

  1. Cf. Vico, who in the The New Science, laid great stress on the fundamental importance of the burial, and therefore the remembrance, of the dead to the consolidation of what we know as human culture. The theme was reprised by Ugo Foscolo, in Dei sepolcri. See also Chateaubriand, Génie du Christianisme, part 1, bk. 6, ch. 3; part 4, bk. 2.

  Z 3036

  1. The passage from “Censeo” is an unattached marginal addition.

  Z 3040

  1. All his life Leopardi felt he was a prisoner of his intellectual temperament (cf., e.g., Z 3410–11). In many of his works, in fact, we find the metaphor of prison, analyzed by Franco Ferrucci in his essay “Il sogno del prigioniero” (Addio al Parnaso, Milan: Bompiani, 1971, pp. 99–140). His interest in actual prisons is also documented by Z 4045.

  Z 3042

  1. This citation comes from Fabricius, Bibliotheca Graeca, bk. 9, ch. 38, “De Photio,” vol. 9, p. 421.

  Z 3044

  1. Barthélemy, Viaggio d’Anacarsi, vol. 10, pp. 101–102, that is Travels of Anacharsis the Younger in Greece, 7th ed., London 1818, vol. 6, p. 30: “The crown is not bestowed at the pleasure of a tumultuous assembly. The magistrate who presides at the festivals causes a small number of judges to be drawn by lot, who engage by an oath to decide impartially.” This reference is a later marginal addition.

  2. Several authorities—among the ancients, Herodotus and Plato; among the moderns, Justus Lipsius—had judged that Hesiod predated Homer. Leopardi had himself embraced this argument in his preface to his version of Hesiod’s Titanomachia (a fragment from the Theogony). Cf. Poeti greci e latini (B2), pp. 249–71. See Z 4392.

  Z 3045

  1. Fabricius, Bibliotheca Graeca, bk. 2, ch. 15, vol. 1, pp. 567ff.

  2. Fabricius, Bibliotheca Graeca, bk. 2, ch. 12, vol. 1, p. 474; and the article from the Biblioteca Italiana cited on Z 961.

  Z 3047

  1. See Z 3013 and note.

  Z 3051

  1. For the need to cultivate an apparent nonchalance in art, behind which lies concealed constant effort and study, Damiani recalls Algarotti, Pensieri diversi, in Opere, tome 8, p. 115. Poetic form is given to this idea in “Scherzo,” placed in 1835 among the poems at the very end of the Canti. The importance of nonchalance, or negligenza (cf. Z 50), is stressed by Gravina, Della ragion poetica, bk. 1, ch. 3 (p. 7).

  Z 3055

  1. In fact the word “fiaba” is now held to derive from the Vulgar Latin *flaba(m) (Pacella).

  Z 3057

  1. St. John Chrysostom, Opera, Paris 1718–1738 (= LL), loc. cit.

  2. Leopardi did not have a complete edition of the Decameron at Recanati and therefore resorted to an anthology, namely, Novelle ventotto … scelte, Padua 1739. The example given in the Crusca is from Decameron 2, 7.

  Z 3058

  1. The letter by Sebastiano Ciampi, a contemporary and professor of Greek at the University of Warsaw, was published in the Gazzetta (and not Giornale) di Milano, 13 February 1820.

  Z 3059

  1. This entry is evidence of a shared contemporary interest in the theme of “denaturing” (Z 1597–602). See, e.g., an article that refers to the professional opinions of Louis-Jacques Moreau de la Sarthe, Albrecht von Haller, and Johann Friedrich Meckel on monstrosities (D. Pietro Betti, “Uomo mostruoso di Macao,” in Antologia, tome 9, January 1823, pp. 143–45). A recent comprehensive study is L. Daston and K. Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150–1750, New York: Zone Books, 1998.

  2. Francisco Xavier Clavigero, Storia della California, Venice 1789 (= LL), p. 113: “Deformed individuals among the Californians are as rare as they are among the peoples of Mexico.” See Z 3180 and note.

  Z 3060

  1. Festus, De verborum significatione, p. CCLXXX: “antiqui etiam porgam dixerunt pro porrigam.”

  2. In both instances Desbillons ascribes active value to the participle. The presence of many other such participles in the Zibaldone demonstrates Leopardi’s interest in this topic (cf. Timpanaro, La filologia, p. 57 [B11]).

  Z 3062

  1. Leopardi follows Desbillons in copying the mistaken reference to fable no. 6 (instead of 8), l. 4.

  2. Varro, De lingua latina 9, 50 (32) and 8, 54 (30).

  3. Phaedrus, “Lupus ad canem” (3, 7, l. 5 in modern editions).

  Z 3066

  1. An edition of Cervantes’s Novelas exemplares was published in Milan in 1615 (= LL).

  2. A biography of Milton was inserted into the Italian version of Paradise Lost, published in Venice in 1783 (= LL), and it furnished some information about the spread of Italian literature in England.

  Z 3067

  1. Alberto Lollio’s oration is an exaltation of the Tuscan language, which, it is claimed, the French, the Spanish, and the Germans all endeavored to learn. In the preface to vol. 1 of the Prose fiorentine Dati seeks to account for the international prestige of Tuscan in terms of its elegance, abundance, purity, sweetness, verve, and nobility. The following reference to Speroni is a marginal addition.

  2. Caro, letter no. 67, of 16 May 1555 to Varchi, Lettere familiari, vol. 3, p. 73.

  3. The Life referred to here is prefaced to Caro, Lettere familiari, vol. 1, pp. XLIVff.

  4. See Redi, Opere, vol. 4, pp. 177–79, 184–87, where we are told that Filicaia’s canzone, which is also cited on Z 24, was sent to Rome, to France, and to Poland.

  5. Mazzucchelli’s Life of Alamanni is prefaced to L. Alamanni, La coltivazione, Venice 1751, p. 38.

  Z 3068

  1. As Leopardi argues on Z 3855, modern Italian, on the contrary, is lacking in political and military vocabulary.

  2. Leopardi adapts the Greek words to the Italian syntax, hence the first noun in the accusative case and the second in the genitive.

  Z 3069

  1. This is an allusion to the Dialogues du nouveau langage français italianisé by Henri Estienne. Leopardi does not appear to have discussed this work before, either in the Zibaldone or elsewhere.
r />   Z 3070

  1. See the passage by Lollio cited on Z 3066, where the author mentions in particular the chair of Italian on the island of Maiorca (Spain).

  2. In fact, three languages other than Latin (“tres linguae”) had been taught in some universities, in Italy as well as in Europe (Rome, Bologna, Paris, Oxford, Salamanca), since the fourteenth century: Hebrew, Greek, and Arabic (and sometimes other oriental languages), for the purposes of biblical exegesis and instruction for missionaries. The Propaganda Fide was a college founded by Pope Gregory XV in 1622 to train future missionaries.

  3. Leopardi is probably right, although we know that at the Pisan “Studium” there was in fact, in 1633–1634, a chair of Tuscan language held by Benedetto Buommattei, whose oration in praise of the Tuscan language is mentioned hereafter; see D. Barsanti, “I docenti e le cattedre dal 1543 al 1737,” in Storia dell’Università di Pisa 1343–1737, Ospedaletto (Pisa): Pacini, 1993, vol. 1, tome 2, pp. 511 and 566.

  Z 3071

  1. Buommattei’s oration, which turns upon the great prestige of the Italian language, is contained within his treatise Della lingua toscana, but it is also reproduced in the Raccolta di prose, pp. 287–301. By Grammatica Leopardi means the same work, Naples edition of 1733.

  2. Cf. Cicero, De re publica 2, 12, 23, and on p. 151 in Mai’s edition.

  3. Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae 13, 9, 5.

  4. That is, St. Basil’s Opera omnia, Paris 1721–1730 (= LL). Another instance of the Greek term with the same meaning is in Plutarch, Moralia 182b.

  Z 3072

  1. In modern editions Phaedrus 4, 26.

  Z 3073

  1. Davanzati, Scisma d’Inghilterra, p. 125. For the overwhelming part played by fortune in human affairs see Z 316–17 and 2800–803. Cf. also Z 3098, 3342–43, 3382, 4119, 4240, 4309.

  2. See Z 2592 and note 2.

  3. Davanzati, Scisma d’Inghilterra, p. 128.

  4. Cicero, De re publica, 3, 16, 26.

  Z 3078

  1. Perticari, Apologia di Dante, p. 99, note 8.

  Z 3080

  1. These two spellings with a grave accent correspond with those given in the dictionaries consulted by Leopardi (Pacella).